On the Nature of Coincidental Events
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ORIGINAL PAPER
On the Nature of Coincidental Events Alessandra Melas1
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Pietro Salis2
Received: 26 April 2020 / Accepted: 5 September 2020 The Author(s) 2020
Abstract It is a common opinion that chance events cannot be understood in causal terms. Conversely, according to a causal view of chance, intersections between independent causal chains originate accidental events, called ‘‘coincidences.’’ The present paper takes into proper consideration this causal conception of chance and tries to shed new light on it. More precisely, starting from Hart and Honore´’s view of coincidental events (Hart and Honore´ in Causation in the Law. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1959), this paper furnishes a more detailed account on the nature of coincidences, according to which coincidental events are hybrids constituted by ontic (physical) components, that is the intersections between independent causal chains, plus epistemic aspects; where by ‘‘epistemic’’ we mean what is related, in some sense, to knowledge: for example, access to information, but also expectations, relevance, significance, that is psychological aspects. In particular, this paper investigates the role of the epistemic aspects in our understanding of what coincidences are. In fact, although the independence between the causal lines involved plays a crucial role in understanding coincidental events, that condition results to be insufficient to give a satisfactory definition of coincidences. The main target of the present work is to show that the epistemic aspects of coincidences are, together with the independence between the intersecting causal chains, a constitutive part of coincidental phenomena. Many examples are offered throughout this paper to enforce this idea. This conception, despite—for example—Antoine Augustine Cournot and Jacques Monod’s view, entails that a pure objectivist view about coincidences is not tenable. Keywords Chance Causality Epistemic access Ontic independence Coincidences Mind-dependence
Though the paper is an outcome of a common, shared effort, Alessandra Melas is mainly responsible for Sects. 1, 2, 4.2., 4.3., and Pietro Salis is mainly responsible for Sects. 3, 3.1., 3.2., 4. 4.1. Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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Axiomathes
1 Introduction A subclass of chance events1 of particular interest is that called ‘‘coincidences.’’ Coincidences are events that come from the intersections between independent causal chains. One example, provided by David Owens, is an accidental collision between a person sitting in a particular place and a falling cargo door: It is a coincidence that I was sitting at the spot where the cargo door fell—this event can be analyzed into two events (a) my sitting at place A and (b) the cargo door’s landing at place A, events which have quite independent causal histories […] (Owens 1992: 12). One of the leading views regarding chance is provided by Antoine-Augustin Cournot. As he highlights, the core of this conception o
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